*BIG* Career Changes & A Personal AMA | Jesse Cramer - E150

0:004.5 years ago, I left my engineering career for good. And today, another new chapter starts. I'm joining a new financial planning firm as a partner and owner of Best It Stay Colder and I'm building a financial planning practice designed with listeners like you in mind. I'm excited to share those details with you today and then stick around for a fun ask me anything that, for once every 150 episodes or so, will be filled with your personal questions for me. Welcome to Personal Finance for Long Term Investors, where every episode teaches you personal finance and long term investing in simple terms. Now, here's your host, Jesse Kramer. Welcome to Personal Finance for Long Term Investors. Episode 150, my name's Jesse Kramer. I'm a financial planner. I work with retirees and people getting ready for retirement from all across the USA. You can learn more at planwiththecsci.com. No review of the week this week, just the good stuff. What I do want to say first is, this is important to me. I want to say thank you. This is an understatement.

1:00It would be an understatement to say that without you listening, this next career move that I'm going to describe to you today simply wouldn't be possible. And I feel like I owe you so, so much. And I'm maybe off to a bad start because this episode won't exactly be the helpful money content that you're used to that I try to deliver to every single episode. This episode is a little more self-serving so apologies in advance. I just want to say thank you again because more and more I'm interweaving the work I do every single day with the knowledge that I share with you here on this podcast. And I couldn't be doing it without you listening. So thanks. As I said in the intro, I've started an exciting new chapter career-wise, a little bit scary, but very, very exciting. And I know somewhere in career change class 101, they suggest that you not change jobs when you have two kids under two years old. But there's no better motivator to get this thing right. And I think that's what I'm going to be doing. I will be joining a growing independent wealth management and retirement planning firm based in Syracuse, New York called Realtto Wealth. I'll share more about Realtto in a minute.

2:01But you know, some questions that I'll be answering over today's short intro. Why the change? What kind of advice and investment philosophies will I be offering and why is this move more aligned with me, Jesse? And then potentially, I hope more aligned with you listening. What makes us different? What makes Realtto different? What won't I be doing that perhaps other advisors can offer you and some advisors do very, very well? And then will I be accepting clients? And then how can you learn more? So let's walk through it. First things first, why the change? I spent the last four and a half years working with and learning from a group of smart and hardworking people here at firm in Rochester that firm for understandable reasons sold itself back in the fall to a big national corporation with private equity ownership. And I stayed there a few months, but ultimately realized an important truth. I want a need to work for a fully independent fiduciary firm. It's too important for the way I want to work with clients. As you'll hear in the next few minutes, the practice I'm now building is perfectly aligned with precisely the kind of knowledge that I provide here on the podcast. And whether it's the amount of planning work to do for a client or whether it's a decision

3:06about active investing versus passive investing, I want a need to make the best decisions for my clients period and story. And I need to be working inside of a independent firm in order to do that the way I want to do it. And here I am at 36 years old. I'd love to work with my clients for another 20 or 30 years. And therefore I think there's no time to make this change like right now, like the present. I also know there's a growing group of families and investors and retirees all over the country who want a different kind of service than what wealth management has traditionally offered them. And people out there, not in this audience probably, but there are people out there in the general public who assume that great financial advice must come with a Mahagani desk and a high rise office and a $5,000 suit. I just saw something the other day. There's a big article in a big news story rather in Forbes about how some of these lists of greatest advisors in the state are all bought and paid for. And I think a lot of people in the general public, they see, oh, here's one of the top 10 wealth advisors in the state.

4:07And they think that person must be good. It's bought and paid for. And that's what goes on in the high rise offices and the $5,000 suits. And right. So those fake awards and those $5,000 suits, that used to be the way maybe that this industry worked. And I think there are plenty of giant firms out there that are still convinced that that's what the general public wants to see. But people like us, we know better. And the times they are are changing. And they have been for a while. There's a different way to go about it that actually involves better financial advice with simpler investments and with lower fees. And that's one of my goals. And hearing from what you say in this audience, that's exactly what you are looking for too. So changing gears to my new firm, Realtto Wealth, that's a niche that we're trying to serve, the niche being what I just described, people who are looking for better financial advice at yes, at lower fees. So let's move on to the next question. What kind of advice and investment philosophies will we be offering? And why is that more aligned with both me, Jesse, but potentially also with you listening?

5:10So if you've listened to a few episodes, let me ask you this. Do I spend more time talking about the investing itself or about all the other topics in retirement planning? I'm pretty sure it's the latter. And in our practice, first and foremost, we will be leading with financial planning. That is a comprehensive understanding of all the various moving pieces in your family's financial ecosystem. And next important point, the investing itself will have an overwhelming emphasis on low costs and passive strategies. This at least in my opinion is how we can deliver excellent advice at a lower cost. You're not paying for teams of researchers. You're not paying for some high-salaried person who claims he can beat the market. We just invest in a plain and simple way. You're not really paying for overperformance. You're just paying for simple market performance. Candidly, I think active management, picking winners and picking losers, timing the market, rapid changes to portfolio construction. I think active management is a bit like smoking cigarettes because it's an expensive habit and it leads to worse long-term outcomes. It costs you more and it hurts your health.

6:10Active management is the same way. If you want your advisor to recommend, well, which stocks to pick or which cigarettes to smoke, my colleagues and I are not going to be a good fit for you. But we are going to be a good fit if you're looking for an expert, thought partner, helping you understand where your blind spots are, guiding you and your family through decades we hope of interesting and nuanced financial decisions so that you can live a better life. That is where the deep value lies. So who will we be serving? What does an ideal client look like? Our ideal client is going to have many, if not all, of the following features. First, retirement is a major goal that you'll be planning for. It might mean that you're already retired. It might mean you hope to retire in two or five or ten years, but retirement planning really is kind of the big scary goal. Second, and with retirement comes many interesting conversations about withdrawal strategies and income planning and social security and healthcare, tax planning, RMA, RMDs, the fun stuff. So if those are questions that you've been pondering or struggling with, you're probably going to be a good fit for us. Third, are ideal clients want an ongoing year over year annual relationship, not just

7:14a one-time thought partner? Fourth, are ideal clients buy into the investment philosophies I just described, low cost, academically backed investment philosophies. You will be paying us to take on the responsibility of managing your portfolio so you can go live more in life, but you won't be paying us to beat the market. And you can trust that in the background. We will keep your portfolio simple and effective. And then fifth, are ideal clients might have looked at what a traditional advisor relationship would have cost them. And they saw, you know, $30,000 a year, $50,000 a year or more, and you'd rather pay considerably less than that. It's not going to be cheap, but it's going to be much less. And you still expect to receive expertise and good service at that price. So if you're curious if you might be a good fit, if you're interested in referring a friend our way, the short takeaway for our ideal clients are people thinking about retirement, who want an ongoing thought partner, who believe in detailed financial planning, who appreciate keeping their investment simple, and who want expertise with lower fees. Head over to planwithjessey.com and fill out the form there.

8:15The last question, which maybe goes without saying, is the firm accepting clients and what kinds? Yes, we are. And personally, and a few of my colleagues are as well. Over the past few years, I've identified two main types of clients who seem to come work with me and they seem to be a very, very good fit. The first type is someone who's already working with a financial advisor, and you're realizing you might be getting less than what you're paying for. Specifically one of the three following things is probably true. One, your portfolio is actively managed and complex and you're not really seeing the results. Two, you've had very limited financial planning conversations. The idea of planning a retirement cash flow or a social security decision or tax planning, it's just not something that you've talked about with your current advisor. And then the third reason, usually in combination with one of the first two, is that you're currently paying a 1% or more a UMFee and you're interested in getting a better value at a lower price. Very common. So if that sounds like you, please, we'd be happy to chat. And then the second type of client is actually not you listening right now.

9:15If you're listening to this, it's not you. But it's someone you know. Someone you care about, maybe someone you love because many of you listening here are hardcore DIYers. And that means that hopefully you're here because you learn some things from me, but you're just not in the market for a financial planner. And that's totally fair. But your sister maybe could use a trusted financial help or your long time neighbor who keeps complaining about his guy who's pushing annuities at him or your dog sitter's bowling partner. I don't know. But I'm saying, I've been honored over the past couple of years that listeners like you will introduce me to people in your lives and you trust me to take care of them and you trust me to do right by them. So the second type of successful client story involves a friend or loved one in your life who could use our help and you making that introduction. So again, if this sounds like you, please visit planwithjessey.com. You can fill out the form there. I really look forward to chatting with you or a person that you know. And if you're still listening, thank you again. This podcast is very much a community project. And I see this career change as this natural offshoot of the topics and the philosophies

10:19that we discuss here. Thank you again for listening to personal finance for long term investors. And now we're going to pivot to a fun interview led by my pal Justin Peters. We curated a list of ask me anything questions from listeners just like you. And we hope this conversation helps you to get to know me a little bit better. And I promise we will get back to the nerdy, wonky nuance to personal finance and retirement topics in the next episode. Jesse congrats man. 150 episodes. That's a huge milestone for people that aren't in the podcasting space. Like hat tip to you. Most people don't make it a 15 let alone 150. Well, thank you. Thank you, Justin. It's a labor of joy. It's a labor of love, a labor of joy. I have a blast recording. And I mean, right, when we started working together, kind of two episodes a month at a time. Now we're up to three episodes a month, but still you just kind of chip away and it feels like episode 100 wasn't that long ago. And yet here we are now with episode 150 and I think many, many more to come. Yeah, you wanted to do something special for 150.

11:21So you have this like typical AMA format on your podcast that I know your listeners know and love, but you came to me with an idea. You want to share the idea for today's conversation? Totally. So the idea was I will get questions from you guys listening right now. Sometimes I'll get questions where I'm like, well, that's a funny question. It's a cool question. It's a question about more me than it is about finances. I'm not going to answer in an episode though because if you ask me my favorite ice cream flavor, you know, I want to keep the episodes, the real AMA episodes full of really good financial information because that's what the audience is here for. But this episode is going to be the fun exception where we're taking the questions that you, the audience members have sent that might be a little bit more personal in nature about me. And I'm going to go through them in this episode. So it'll be the treat, you know, every, I don't know, every 50 episodes, every 100 episodes. We'll do one like this as a little treat to make sure that we answer all those other AMA questions. Yes. So you got 18 questions that you sent me total. I think I'm going to do my best to tackle every one of those questions here.

12:23I broke it into a couple of different sections, finances, family life, your career change, and then we'll have a fun rabbit fires section at the very end here. And I'm thinking maybe we start out with actually Robert's question right off the get go here. It might be a good one to cover before we actually jump into finances. Robert asked, would Jesse please tell us who comprises his podcast team and what their roles are? Good question, Robert. Well, Justin, it's you, your brother Kyle and your colleague Alex, are the main three players in the production team doing everything from keeping me organized, keeping me on task because there is a good amount of work. And sometimes I slip behind and I owe these guys some recording, some files and I'm tardy. So everything from that down to the very nitty gritty editing out my flubbed lines, adding in interesting sound effects when the time comes. So anyway, it really is Justin and his brother Kyle. So Justin Peters, Kyle Peters, who were a part of simple pod studios and their colleague Alex Williams up in the great white north of his Calgary.

13:25Yes, he's in Calgary. That's right. Alex shout out to Calgary. So there's your answer, Robert. You were probably a little bit more of a full time job early, but now that you're on schedule, you really have your listener dialed in. Now I think it's a little bit easier for us to work together and it's been a blast working on the show, seeing the show grow Jesse excited for the last 150 episodes, but really the next 150 episodes to come. So let's start out with finances. So we asked readers and listeners to submit their questions. They could be non-financial questions. You were really expecting a lot of them to be non-financial questions, more personal questions, but of course we did get some financial questions that came in here. So I figured this is a personal financial. Let's tackle these right from the get go and then we'll work our way through it. So Jeff asked, what are the most frivolous things that you've been done? And he had a couple of funny follow ups too, if you're a keyaguy or a Porsche guy, and if you buy actual Twinkies or just generic store brand Twinkies. So tackle that however you want. Yeah, well I guess not technically a keyaguy, but I am a Korean car guy.

14:25We're a Hyundai family. Jeff, we have two Hyundai's. I drive a Tucson. My wife drives the family car as it were, which is a Hyundai Palisade. But still I would consider them very much middle class consumer vehicles. When it comes to Twinkies, I would probably buy the real Twinkie, but listen, wagons are grocery store and candidly I guess we probably do most of our shopping at Aldi. Aldi is great prices. I save a dollar where I can. And the most frivolous thing I spend money on, I mean listen, I've talked about it before and I think it's totally fine to spend money on your passions. And so I think about things like I like racquet sports, I like hiking. I really care about this podcast. I mean there are things in life where it's I spend money and I think if the average person to be like, you spend how much on hiking boots? You spend how much on a tennis racket? Like they might furl their brow, but it's few and far between where I say I really like this thing and I'm going to spend some money there. I think that's a perfectly good, a good personal finance habit to have. I think that's totally fair. Let's keep going here. Helen asked, when do you think you'll be financially independent yourself or are you already

15:28and you just love us so much that you can't stop? Well, definitely the second one. I do love this so much that I have no plan on stopping. If that means that I have a quote unquote retirement job at some point because I'm retired and yet continue doing this, that's fine because it's definitely like I said before. It's a labor of joy. One thing we can do, we'll link in the show notes. I didn't interview with Andy Hill of marriage, kids and money if you're familiar with Andy and his brand. He's doing a cool series on coast, fire, where you aren't financially independent yet, but you have enough saved up such that normal investment returns will get you to retirement. In other words, you don't necessarily have to save anymore. All you have to do is let your current savings continue to compound and you will reach financial independence. And I think under that definition, you could make the argument that Kelly, my wife and I, have reached coast FI. But we have two young daughters and I think we'll probably get into that at some point this episode. The youngest one won't be graduating college for 22 years if that's the path she takes.

16:30So I have a feeling I'm going to stay working for quite a while and in fact, I had a prospective client ask me last week. He was a younger gentleman and one of his questions was, if I come and work with you, Jesse, is there any chance that you might retire in five years and then I'm going to need to find a new financial planner? And I used the same line on him, which was like, my daughter is going to be out of college in 22 years. I highly doubt I'm going to stop working any time before then. So that's my thoughts on at least the retire early portion of the financial independence question. Yeah, we'll link up that episode in the show notes. You also mentioned coast FI. Are you still saving? Like are you still aggressively saving? What are you currently working towards in terms of retirement savings? Yeah, not aggressively saving. Although part of that reason why is a function of my little career change itself, which I talked about in the first part of this episode, where I met this interesting crossroads where I took a step back salary-wise to pursue something that I'm really passionate about, which is independence and which is candidly just charging lower fees and working with clients

17:32in a way that I feel like is really detailed in the way I want to work with them. And what it meant is that in the short run, a good amount of my former clients stayed where they were. Some of them are coming to work with me again, which is amazing. The idea is that eventually I'll build back up to the point where I was before and meaning income wise. I'll build back to the point where I was before. And at that point, I'll be able to start saving quote unquote aggressively again. Having children costs some money too. And I'm at a point, one of the nice things about being at coast FI or just building that kind of flexibility into your personal financial life is that if you want to splurge on your kids, you feel like you can because you know that you've already have this saving engine that's the snowball that's kind of building and building in the background that I can actively spend this year and the snowball will still grow because of the savings we did over the past 15 years. So it's a nice spot to be in. Let's round out this first section around finances. Jay Lewis had a really interesting question here. I don't know if you've given this one any thought, but he asked, what is the worst piece of financial advice you've ever given out and wish you've never said?

18:35Do you have an answer for that one? I hate to like out you, but like it would be interesting to just see what your thoughts are. Yeah, I mean, I, one thing I probably could have done or would have been fun is to go back to like the first 25 blog post I wrote or the early podcast episodes I recorded. And just to see if there's anything like really stands out in there that's either outright bad or something that maybe I just changed my mind on in a big way. One anecdote that does stick out in my mind was when I was very much on the early stages of the Dunning Kruger curve, if you will, which if you're not familiar with the Dunning Kruger curve, it basically says the average person in this world, when they learn about a new topic, any new topic, they can learn about that topic and they very quickly convince themselves they're an expert, even though they barely know anything. And then as they learn more, that's when they realize, oh, I've actually got a lot, I've got a big gap in my knowledge base that I don't know about. And so I'm sure it's one of those early days when I consumed a lot of personal finance knowledge.

19:35I thought I knew a lot more than I did. I was talking to someone about their mortgage because they had a mortgage. They had multi hundred thousand dollars of debt on that mortgage, which concerns them, but it was only at like a 3% interest rate. And if someone came to me today with that problem, I'd want to understand where they were coming from. I would try to ask them good questions. But ultimately, I would try to point out to them that having a mortgage at 3% is kind of a nice thing to have. It's a very, very low interest rate. It's not an interest rate necessarily worth being overly concerned about. But at that time, again, this is going on 10 years ago, I basically helped them put a plan together to understand how much money they would save if they paid down that mortgage early. So that one sticks out. It's like, that's just not advice that I would give today. Or it just, it would certainly sound a lot different if I had to give them that advice today. It's part of the learning process. That's why we're all here to invest in knowledge as it were. So that's a fun question. Che Lewis. Yeah, that was a really fun one. We'll sprinkle in some finances through the rest of this conversation. But like I said, the real intent behind episode 150 was a to celebrate you for 150 episodes

20:37and be give the listeners a little bit of who just is like outside of just your personal finance internet personality, let's say. So let's talk about family life a little bit. So it sounded like you grow up in Rochester. Have you always lived in Rochester? And then Robert had a follow up question to that too. And he wanted to know if you'd ever entertain the idea of leaving Rochester under the right situation. I grew up in our east of Rochester between Rochester and Syracuse in a very small town called Red Creek, kind of an agricultural town, graduated with 70 kids from our public high school. I'm the youngest of three boys, so I've got two older brothers. And I came to Rochester for college, University of Rochester, is where I went to school. And more or less have stuck around in the city of Rochester ever since. I did live in Wisconsin for about a year and a half, 15 months or so in between undergrad and grad school. And I worked at a software company out in Wisconsin. And that's the only time that I've actually lived outside of Western New York, upstate

21:39Western New York. It was either Red Creek or Rochester, the only places I've ever lived. Would I move? I mean, certainly, I never say never. That said, I think Rochester does have a ton to offer. I really enjoy living here and feel like put down my roots here. My wife grew up moving all around the country, though. So she's got a little bit of this bug to move, to be on the go, to travel. So one way or another, I'm sure we'll spend time, plenty of time away from Rochester, but I don't have any plans to move in the near term, that's for sure. Yeah, you keep convincing me, Rochester is such a great place. I need to come visit you at some point in time. I mean, I mean, especially, so we're talking right now in the height of July, July 20th. Today happens to be just a beautiful summer day. It's like 77 degrees, partly cloudy, nice breeze. It's wonderful. The finger lakes, Lake Ontario, Rochester, between May and I'll say October has a ton to offer between November and April. That's the reason why nobody wants to live here, because our winters are long and harsh and just very, very gray.

22:39But if you can put up with it, or maybe it's just if you grew up here, then you get used to it, and it's totally fine. Living in Austin now, I feel like we could compliment each other well. You come stay at my place during the winter, as I'll come up to you during the summer. Jesse, tell me about family. A bunch of people asked about your family, your family dynamic. I know this has changed a couple a little bit over the last few years. So if you wouldn't mind, paint us a picture, what's the cream or family household look like these days? I'm married to Kelly. Kelly is wonderful. We've known each other for eight years and got married. September will be four years of marriage. And yeah, and we've lived together in one of the eastern suburbs of Rochester. We had our first child two summers ago, so she just turned two years old. And then we had our second daughter back in March on my birthday, actually. So my younger daughter, who's about to be four months old and I share the same exact birthday. We have a dog named Sadie. So anyway, so that's right now. That's our family unit is me and Kelly and our two daughters and our dog. Quincidentally, Kelly's family ended up moving back to Buffalo.

23:43That's where they're originally from. Or like that's where they grew up was Buffalo, even though I alluded as I alluded to earlier. During her childhood, they moved all around the country. But they've retired back to Buffalo. My parents still live out in Red Creek. And so Rochester is about the halfway point between them. So we can go in our west to her parents or in our east to my parents. But yeah, so that's the family. It's so nice to have both sets of parents. Both by two, like you don't feel like you're choosing one or the other. I have some friends that like their parents are in different cities and they have to decide who they want to stay down. They stay next to, especially as you start having kids too, because usually both sets of parents would like to be pretty involved with grandparents. So I'm glad you don't have to choose between the two. Yeah, it is. It is very nice and we're very lucky. I mean, we have some friends whose parents live far, far away. And right, just the family involvement, just the nuts and bolts logistics of childcare. It is very helpful having parents who want to be a part of our lives that close by. So Jared asked a follow up question on babies. He said congrats on the new baby. We also recently had our second child this year.

24:45Our first had major colleague. I'm not exactly sure. College, college. Yeah. So it sounds like you know what that is. And this one does not. It made a world of difference. I'm curious which baby was easier for you. And then a follow up question he asked, are you getting any sleep yet? Well, congrats to you. Well, congrats to you. Was it Jared? Congrats to you on your baby number two. Right. My understanding of college, I don't even know what the underlying cause is. But it's essentially a word for an extremely fussy baby. A baby who is sleeping poorly and eating poorly and constantly crying. And again, I think it could be very, very hard. Especially I think it's infants, right? It's during the infant stage where you have this child who's kind of, you know, it's an infant. And maybe their intestines aren't quite developed yet and they're not digesting food and they're gassy and they're just upset. So anyway. I think it's a very hard circumstance, especially on the parents. I'd be curious if every parent out there feels this way or if it's just some, the early stages of a child's life, I think due to probably sleep deprivation, I'd like this blackout period where we will sit here. We try to remember some of our first daughters early months and just we don't have that many

25:49concrete memories of it. Like we remember like, sure, times were hard and just in terms of like, we probably weren't getting that much sleep where we or we have memories of getting up in the middle of the night, those kind of things, but this distinct, like just how hard it was, we kind of blacked out. Like really, just like the memory formation is not there. And it's now that we're living in the middle of our second daughter's infancy. It's very tempting to say that this second daughter has been harder than our first daughter. Is that actually true or is that just a symptom of the quote unquote blackout? I genuinely don't know. We are still struggling on sleep. I think if you were to compare our four-month-old daughter to the typical four-month-old that our daughter is not sleeping very well, which is definitely hard, harder on Kelly than it is on me candidly. But we're trying to stay optimistic and fingers crossed and just day by day, week by week, if the three-hour stretches of sleep can turn into four and then five and then once in a while maybe even sleeping through the night, that'll be a wonderful day. Oh, it looks like we just slid in one other question to Justin from Austin wants to know,

26:50is baby number three in the cards? Are you done with two? I just talked about this at breakfast this morning. Definitely in the cards, but it is a topic that is just hard to broach at this point in life. I think when you are in the trenches with an infant, the last thing you can think about is intentionally getting yourself back into the trenches in the future. But again, having talked to many other parents and having felt this way ourselves, there does come a point when you have this wonderful one-year-old, two-year-old, three-year-old child in front of you and there's so much joy. And you think to yourselves, like, yeah, we're ready for another one. Why not? So definitely a possibility, but it too early to say right now exactly how that's going on fold. Come on, you are one of three. You should have three. I know. And you and Kelly want to be outnumbered, right? So why not? Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. All right. So, Jesse, let's move into our third section, which we're going to talk a lot about your career. This is probably the most fascinating of all the questions we got, four, five, six, six

27:51people asked about your career change. So we're going to spend a lot of time here for anyone that doesn't know that you made a major career change. So first, let's start about the University of Rochester. Chris would like to know he would love to hear about your time at the University of Rochester and how it shaped your outlook on personal finance and client relations. He'd also love for you to talk a little bit about participating on the Squash team as well. That's okay. You're allowed to call the Squash team. I think that's fine. Good question. Shout out to Chris. Chris and I lived, if it's the Chris I'm thinking of, we lived on the same hall my freshman year. I think he was a sophomore. So, hey, Chris, thanks for listening. Meliora to you. University of Rochester, I loved my time at the U of R. And how did my time at the U of R correspond to what I'm doing now through work? You know, so I came from Rutgers at a very small town, a little farming town. And I think when you grow up in a place like that, just, you know, in the middle of nowhere, so to speak. You look at the big city, you look at the big world, and you kind of develop this, I don't want to say it's an inferiority complex, but it's this idea of, right, people in the big

28:55city do big things and people out here in the country, we do smaller things. And that's totally fine. And something that probably this little seed that got planted in my brain at college was this realization that everybody wakes up in the morning and puts their pants on one leg at the time that really it's a much more loving level playing field than you think. And there's no reason why some country bumpkin can't decide to do something bigger than maybe his birthplace would make you think. Not to say that's exactly what I'm doing, but I guess part of it is, you know, where does this idea come from that? Yeah, I'm going to talk into a microphone and I'm going to publish it and I'm going to pretend like I know what I'm doing. And we're just going to run in this experiment and see how it goes. I don't know, I think some of those seeds were probably planted at the University of Rochester. I majored in mechanical engineering there, which I know we'll get into it in major in finance. I didn't major in economics, anything like that. I majored in engineering and with a bunch of other really smart kids who decided to, they were good at physics, they were good at math and they wanted to go major in engineering

29:56too. And I did well there. I found my classes and the material and my classmates themselves all very interesting. I kind of proved it to myself that out in Red Creek, it was a small pond. So whether I was a big fish or not, it almost didn't matter because the pond was so small. Then you go to U of R. It's a much, much bigger pond and you really start to get a feel for your place in the world, whether you're a big fish, quote unquote, right? It just planted some confidence in me that I think I could go on and do some interesting things if I put my mind to it. And the squash team, how does that come into play? So if you've never heard of it, squash is a racket sport. It's kind of like racket ball. It's played much more in Europe. It's played much more in the USA than in the USA. And I just got very lucky that the squash team at U of R was very good. It just so happened that the years that I was there, the coach was trying to expand the roster from 10 people to 20 people, kind of like a varsity and JV team. And I basically got one of the last spots available because I had a pulse and I was willing

30:56to play. You're like, weren't enough players to fill all 20 spots. So I just got the 20th spot as a thing of me as a volunteer. But again, I just enjoyed it. I worked really hard. I've worked my way up into the top 10 before graduating. And again, it was this little seed in my mind of, okay, well, sometimes it's not so much about talent. I'll look talent certainly helps in this world. You also have to work really hard. And like that was another takeaway too of, I mean, what's one thing little inside baseball here, Justin, is like, I've kind of talked to other people before in our space, producing a personal finance podcast. And there are some of them who I know are smart people. And then one guy in particular who I can think of who runs a retirement related podcast. And his strategy, he's like, I just flip on the mic. I talk for 45 minutes into the mic. I press stop. And then I take that thing and I publish it. And basically what I'm alluding to there is like, it's relatively unpolished and it's kind of off the cuff to top of mind for him, top of his head. And when I listen to his podcast, I'm like, that kind of, I hear that as a listener.

31:58And what I'm saying is he doesn't put that much effort into it. And I think the result kind of shows that he doesn't put that much effort into it. Whereas what you and I are doing here, I would argue a lot more prep, a lot more time. We try to polish it. I'm flubbing my lines all the time. We edit all that stuff out. So what's the lesson? The takeaway is that part of my college takeaway was, well, if you work hard enough, you can have a pretty good end product. And I think that's something that I try to apply kind of in my day to day work now as well. And it didn't happen overnight. It didn't happen on episode 40 to 42 whenever we first started working together. But really over the course of the last 110 episodes, we started to work together. And I see how much hard work that you put into this show and your blog and your work in general. And I'm glad it's finally paying off, man. Let's keep things rolling here. And you alluded to your career as a engineer. So Don and Jeff, I'm going to lump a couple of these questions together. Both wanted to know about your career as an engineer. They asked specifically, what did the typical day as a mechanical engineer actually look

33:00like, what project did you work on? And do you miss anything about engineering? So in day in the life, projects I worked on and what do I miss? So the projects in cells were right, satellite based telescope systems, which are intricate and complex devices that involve a lot of different disciplines of engineering, mechanical, electrical, computer, structural, optical being a really big one. So the one thing that I worked on the most with most of my seven years there was eye-designed thermal management systems for the telescope. So telescope, it's typically orbiting Earth. And when you are in the sunlight, sunlight's beating down on you. You don't have an atmosphere to protect you because you're outside of the atmosphere. So whatever side of the telescope the sun is beating on can get really, really hot. And then whatever side of the telescope is facing deep space can get very, very cold. When you're in the shadow of Earth, then everything's getting really, really cold. And meanwhile, you have these mirrors and lenses, these optics in the telescope that are trying to focus light in a very, very precise way from hundreds of miles away.

34:01And what happens when things get hot and cold, they expand and contract? So your device that's trying to focus light in a very, very precise way is expanding and contracting all the time as it orbits Earth. You can probably put two and two together and realize it's bad for the picture quality if that's happening. So you have a team of engineers who, amongst other things, are trying to keep the temperatures as even as they can through a combination of insulation and little electrical heating strips that are powered by solar panel on the satellite. So that's what I spent most of my time doing. These would be years-long projects, months and months of design, months and months of analysis, sometimes months of testing before you eventually start to build the thing. Once you build it, then you're testing the final units and then you're from the initial word go to the time the thing is an orbit. We're talking years and years and years at times. And so my average day would just be eight hours sitting at my computer, doing design and analysis work. Kind of sort of at my own pace, because one way of thinking about it is, well, we've

35:04allotted, you know, 400 engineering hours to do this task, Jesse. So that supports you at eight hours a day for the next 50 days. Get to work. So you come into work, you grind for eight hours and you, you know, take breaks, go get cups of coffee and chat with some neighbors, but that's about it. And it was a little, a little bland at times and a little repetitive at times. I also worked in a building without any windows in it, which can get a bit of a drink at times. So, I'm trying to think that definitely, does that answer all three parts of the question? Typical day projects you work on, but the last question they asked was, do you, what do you miss about engineering? Oh, yeah. It's kind of interesting hearing you talk about your old job and almost seeing it as parallel to what you're doing now, because at the end of the day, this was just a puzzle piece or a project and you had to figure out how all the puzzle pieces go and work together. So I don't know if you get everything that you really like to get from engineering or if there are parts of that engineering job that you do truly kind of miss. Here and there, you know, once in a while, I'll miss something from the old job. Some of the senior folks there, I mean, just immensely intelligent and talented people.

36:07And they're still obviously very talented and intelligent people that I work with now. But maybe some of that sense of like wonder for lack of a better term or just some of like the technological marvel of some of the work that we did and the technological understanding of some of the work we did really, really neat stuff. But all else being equal. I might give my old job like a seven out of ten, you know, maybe a B minus. Just whereas now when I'm doing, it's an A plus, I love coming to work every day. And part of it just has to do with more interaction with human beings, which I like. I'm not spending eight hours staring at a screen at the same project all day. That's a big plus. Just more variety that way. And then also I think, as I mentioned, part of the whole multi-year and year and year timeline for some of these projects is you could start a project, work on it for 15 months. And then they say like, oh, actually we need you over here or maybe the funding got cut off or something like that. It wasn't a guarantee that you would see a project through the completion, which can be demotivating. Like I put in all this work and I don't even get to understand what happened to it or see

37:09what the final product was. Whereas now there's a bit more of a tight loop where I can immediately see the results from working with a client. I get the interaction from them to know if my work is actually helping them or not. It just feels like that the feedback is a lot more, it happens a lot quicker. It's more human to human. I think there's a lot of reasons why I'm just more wired for this job than the engineering job. So I'm going to put it to just in the, there certainly is a technological systems based problem-solving aspect of my planning work that I really enjoy and it's probably because part of my brain is wired like an engineer. So let's send back out. You talked about your career as an aerospace engineer. When did that start? And when did you start to make a decision that this might not be the right career path for you and figure out financial planning as an opportunity? Yeah. I was working in aerospace in 2014, ended up getting hooked on personal finance kind of between 2014 and 2016, 2017. Like in those years, whereas figuring out my own stuff and just really dove deep into

38:12wanting to understand more about personal finance and retirement planning and all these kind of topics that we talk about here. And then 2018, I believe December of 2018 is when I published the very first blog post on the best interest because I told the story a few times. But make a long story short, a little clutch of my colleagues at the engineering firm realized that it was one of my hobbies and started coming to me with questions. And I might write them these kind of longer answers via email. And it's like, why am I not taking these emails and just publishing them as blog posts? So that's how I started the best interest. And then published the first podcast episode in 2020 or 2021. It would have been probably the summer of 2021. The blog had some pretty good traction and a good amount of email subscribers and people who I was kind of regularly corresponding with. And that's when I thought, I've got this E-Minus career on the engineering track. I'm really pouring a lot of time into this passion project of the blog. People seem to be responding positively.

39:13I wonder if there's enough interest where I could go work for a fiduciary financial planning firm, would some of my readers want to become clients? I know enough to actually be able to help them. That's when those questions started percolating in my head. And so by January of 2022, I had resigned from the engineering firm and started my new career path as a financial planner. Let's talk about it. So we got, like I said, a host of questions about this. Nick, Michael, Tom, and MJ, thank you for all the questions. I'm going to lump some of these questions together and let's piece together the transition here. There were a couple of people that were interested in fears or apprehensions. What did you have to overcome in order to make the transition from engineering to financial planning? I'm sure there's some self-doubt in there or just that imposter syndrome idea. My first job in this industry, I mean pretty clearly, was a business development and relationship job. Meaning, one of the primary tasks was not just working with the clients, but really finding the clients to work with in the first place, right?

40:15Business development sales, whatever you want to call it. And even then, it's like I'm not necessarily comfortable being a salesperson. I understand it's part of the process. I certainly don't mind doing it, but I've always thought of myself as probably the engineer in me. I think of myself as a practitioner. I think of myself as an educator. I want to really understand the technical details of something and explain it to somebody in that way. Just kind of getting over that hump of thinking to myself like, what's my identity in this industry? I think that was something that I kind of wrestled with and maybe I can't at least still wrestle with up until now, which might explain part of my recent move and why I wanted to do that. I want to be a practitioner at the end of the day. I want my clients to think of me as the person who is helping them end up story. So okay, there was some of that. And I think along with that is if you want to enter this industry, you need to pass a certain bar, not a literal, not like the law bar, but in my case, it's the Series 65 exam, right? So okay, pass that, study for that, pass that. But then to me, I've always thought of the CFP as being like the big hurdle to jump over.

41:20I started and stopped studying for that in 2022 and part of the reason why was again, as in my business development role, it's having a CFP wasn't necessarily a requirement. But then started studying again for it earlier this year and about halfway through studying for it. And so it's just the kind of thing of, in addition to family changes and work changes. And now I'm studying for that and trying to get that done in the next 12 months or so, just because again, it's, I feel pretty comfortable with my knowledge base. I'm not too worried about the CFP material or I'm not worried about too many holes in my knowledge, so to speak. But I think having those letters is important. I think that a lot of consumers probably look at, I think a look at a side by side, Jesse with a CFP or Jesse without. I think there's some people who'd say like, yeah, much rather have Jesse with the CFP. I'm rambling at this point a little bit, Justin, you might have to bring me back in. Help me. I understand if I even started to answer the questions there. No, I let you rambled there because we did have a question around an update on the CFP

42:23journey. So glad it sounds like you are again, pursuing the CFP, you're actively working towards it. Is that a multi-year process? Is that like a next year finish line thing? What's the timeline look like for you getting your CFP? For me personally, in my head, I'm kind of thinking, I mean, it's moved out into the future a couple times. The CFP test happens three times a year. November, March, July. And at one point, if you would ask me six months ago, I would have said, yeah, I'm really hoping to sit for the November, 2026 exam. And as things sit right now, I think it's much more realistic to either target the March or the July exam. So this coming March eight months from now or next July, 12 months from now, just because I've bitten off about as much as I can chew between an infant building out a new practice. I can't imagine getting back into student mode either. Like it's been so long since I've had it. Like think about a formal test in that regard. So at the pre-U for making the journey back in, bringing us back to the career change, though, why financial planning in general?

43:25And I think this was MJ that asked this question too. She wanted to know why become an advisor instead of just a creating content online rather than just a personal finance influencer, essentially, why do you pick financial planning, but maybe hope more holistically why financial planning in general? It's a good question. And I think if you're interested in this stuff enough to write a few hundred blog posts and create 150 podcast episodes, like there does come a point where you say, I'm putting in on this time, it would be really nice if somehow some way I started making a living from it. At least that's the conclusion I came to. And there are, thankfully, a few different ways that you can make money in this world. And I'd like to think I put some serious thought into it. And right, one of them is, okay, let's go down the path of being a full-time content creator. How are you actually making money? The most common answer is you're running advertisements in some way or some form. That's kind of just the business model of the internet as a whole. Is we get your attention and then we sell you an ad. And there's nothing wrong with that inherently.

44:27I personally think myself now as a podcaster first and foremost. And when I listen to other podcasts, they're running ads for you listeners who've heard me joke about it probably. They're running ads for protein powder and mattresses. It's like, well, if I'm here talking about retirement planning, do I want to sell protein powders and mattresses? Not really. It's not really my goal. And so I guess to make a long story short, the monetization methods from content creation, running ads, maybe a second and third popular one would be creating a course. I know some personal finance influencers have done that. Hey, pay me $800 to go through my course. Like all of a sudden now, that's kind of just tangential to being a financial coach or a financial advisor. It's all similar in some way. I'm going to teach you about finances. I'm going to help you with your finances. I will be the person pushing the buttons in your finances. They're all pretty similar. And so that career path already exists. It's called being a financial planner. And so that's where I just said, well, okay, the business model is already out there.

45:28And then it just came down to, can I build enough trust over time with audience members and will my audience eventually grow big enough that I can actually build a career without knocking on doors and trying to pitch people products they don't want or need? Are there enough people out there who actually need my advice for me to build a career off of? So that's ultimately what it came down to. And so far, I think it's working. So, what lessons did you learn from your career change? There might be someone that is considering a career change or in the midst of a career change right now. I'm curious, not necessarily engineering to financial planning, but just the transition from one career to another. What were some lessons that you learned from it? I mean, one of the big takeaways and shout out to a college buddy of mine, Dave, who I talked to before making the career change because he ended up taking a big leap in his own life and I asked him how he went through it. And one thing he told me has stuck with me and now I'm going to share it with you all, which is he basically encouraged me to think of the kind of the best case in the worst case

46:29scenario. And for me, the worst case scenario would have been I changed careers and within six or 12 or 24 months, I realized, man, I am bad at this. It is not working out. I'm not making any money. I'm not having any fun. Like, basically, I made a mistake. I goofed up. And if that came to pass, I would have, you know, talked to my tail between my legs, gone back to a major aerospace contractor, whether it was the one I worked with in Rochester or it could have been a different one and said, Hey, here's what I did. Here's my background why you should hire me. Here's the reason why I have been working in aerospace for the last 12 or 18 months, but would you please hire me back? And I think I could have gotten a job pretty easily back in the aerospace career. And I would argue that I actually probably would have gotten a raise because one thing you do in a lot of those careers is you hop from firm to firm for a 20% raise at a time. So that was my worst case. And my point is it wasn't that bad. And then the best case scenario, of course, is you could argue it's what's playing out in front of me right now, which is that I love what I'm doing.

47:31And I found a path that is both fulfilling and helping people out there in the world. And also putting food on the table for my family and it just checks every single box. Your worst case isn't that bad. And your best case is really, really good. It's kind of this encouraging result to make you go take that leap. Whereas other times someone could go through that exercise and be like, well, my best case is I'm barely subsistence living. And the worst case is I ruined my life for the next 20 years. Okay, well, maybe that's something you don't want to pursue. It's kind of similar to what Tim Aferus calls fear setting. You don't let me set my fears. Let me think through what the worst case is. Let me think through what the thing I'm afraid of really looks like. And for me, the worst case scenario just wasn't that bad. So it encouraged me to take the leap. That's awesome, Jesse. How much of your own financial stability played into you being able to make this change as well? Was that something that was in the back of your head? I know you took a pay bump or a decrease going from engineering to financial planning.

48:35Did that play a part in some of this? It's your own security and the fact that you had saved some money already and you were allowed to kind of give yourself the permission to make this change. I'm going to put this on the listeners right now. And it's like as a listener, as a long-term investor, like what gives you the confidence to take $50,000, throw it in a tax bull brokerage account, invest in an index fund and just let it sit there and put it at risk of potentially losing 10% or 20% or 30% are more in value. Like what gives you the confidence to do that? The answer is you believe in enough evidence and you believe in the probabilities enough to know that over the long run, you will look backward in time and realize that putting that $50,000 in your tax bull brokerage account today is a smart move. Like ultimately that's what it is. It's not quite the same as saying it's an act of faith, but it's similar. You think the odds are in your favor, you think the probabilities are in your favor and you're okay with taking a little bit of risk for that long-term reward. And I think my answer to this question is very similar where yeah.

49:36So I took a pay cut going from engineering to financial planning. Part of the reason why is because I looked at the numbers I understood and I figured, well, if I do this well and if I do it as well as I think I can do it, in the long run, I'll actually probably be earning more money and I think I'll just enjoy it more. And both of those ended up being true. And then most recently, leaving my old firm and then coming to join Realtto, same thing happened. I left most of my income behind, but part of the reason why was part of the reason is just philosophical and the way I wanted to run my practice. But then part of it too is saying, well, I think that there's an equitable way, a more equitable way of doing things here where fees can be lower and yet I do end up paying myself more. And in the long run, that's going to work out better for clients. It's going to work out better for me personally. So again, it's that short-term sacrifice, but it's because probabilistically thinking in the long run, I think it's going to be better for everybody involved. So again, I don't remember the exact verbage of the question. But I think that comes close to answering it.

50:37Yeah. It nailed it. And I love that that's kind of like the core value of a lot of listeners of this. I mean, that's the reason why long-term investor is in the title or just long-term thinker. Thinking outside of just the, how is this going to impact me immediately? But honestly, how is this going to impact the next 10, 20, 30 years, my entire lifetime and really starting to think through some of your decisions in that way? So Jesse, I think that covers most of the things that I had on the list in terms of family life and career change, anything that you felt uncovered there. If not, we're going to move into the fun rapid-fire question segment. Oh, I love it. I mean, these have been great questions so far. So let's do it. Let's do the rapid-fire. I got lots of fun questions that I just didn't feel like fit into the themes that I was trying to build here in this conversation. But I felt like would be fun for you to answer. So these questions all come from a couple of different listeners and readers. Cliff, Jay, Lewis, Casey, and Brad. So thanks for the questions, guys. Let's first talk about your next travel destination. Do you have something on the calendar, either with the family or yourself or just with Kelly?

51:37Nothing too exciting. Kelly and I are going to a wedding in North Carolina. She went to NC State, Go Wolfpack and sort of a rally. And then in California, I'm actually going out to back-to-back conferences. I'm speaking at both conferences in September. One of them is focused on financial planners and I'll be talking about how the podcast has brought me some success in my career. And then the other one is the audience there is content creators, UNI just. That's FinCon. And there I'll be talking about the other way around about how I use the podcast to help build this financial planning practice. So that'll be fun in California trip. Nothing exotic planned, traveling with the two small ones is a challenge. But yeah, we'll probably take them to some, you know, we're doing local stuff. We're doing finger lakes, Adirondacks, things around upstate New York. And that's perfectly fine and quite fun. Yeah, maybe a follow up to that that you might have answered this question just then. Where do you and your family like to vacation? In the long run, I think we certainly hope to be a family who travels. Kelly loves, loves loves, getting on a plane and going to new places.

52:39And I enjoy it too. It's just my joy for it, can't compare to her passion. So the answer is we enjoy going to places that we've never been before. That's a big one and I think whenever Kelly takes a trip, that's part of her checklist. Is she really wants to go somewhere where she's never been before? I'm on board with that. At the same time, and maybe this is almost a little bit contradictory, but we both enjoy the idea of having kind of almost like a family ritual, like a family get away, this idea of, and again, the one that that comes to mind for me is the Adirondack Mountains are depending on where exactly you're going, somewhere between a three and a half and a five-hour drive from where we are here in Rochester. And it's beautiful and I've got so many memories from time well spent there. And so the idea of making it a family tradition of kind of, you know, getting a little small cottage there is like a rental and going there for a week or two every summer. Like that is something that I would love to do. Next up is Favorite Movie. I don't know if you have one that like jumps out to you right away if not, I'll edit this to maybe a Favorite Movie of yours that you recently saw.

53:39Ten years ago, I would have said The Matrix. Which I still think is a great movie. Is it my favorite movie? I don't know. Is it Lord of the, I can tell you a few I like. I mean, I love the Lord of the Rings movies. I'm a fan of the Michael Lewis movies, Big Short and Money Ball. I'm a fan of a good courtroom procedural. You know, I enjoy a really well written script. So something like a few good men or 12 angry men, the like 1960s version, if you've never seen 12 angry men, the original, the old version, what great writing. The one reason why it's such a cool movie is the entire movie takes place inside of a, is it deliberation room where 12 man jury would come and talk about a case. The entire movie takes place in the one. Crazy. It's just good dialogue mixed in with a mixed in with a nice message about kind of like critical thinking. And it just makes for a wonderful movie. Anyway, I know now we're maybe really going off the rails if we're here for Jesse's movie podcast. Movie analysis podcast. But hopefully if you haven't seen any of those movies, I just mentioned I'm a fan of

54:42all of them. And is your oldest daughter old enough to be exposing you to like the media classics like Moana or Toy Story 5 right now or any of those have you gotten into the kids animation movies yet? She's not even at, you know, what a Disney movies what 80 minutes long, 90 minutes long. She's not quite at 80 minute, follow the plot movies yet, give her another couple of years. I mean, she's still very much in the kind of more like the Sesame Street three minute segments. And then we move on to the next segment type of watching. And I know if I've ever quite broken that I still like my three minute segments. Let's talk about your favorite book on the opposite side. Are you reading much these days? And if so, a favorite fiction book and or a favorite nonfiction book of yours. I'm not reading nearly as much as I used to read and part of it. It's just a function of free time. But I will still become a big fan of the Libby app, L.I. BBY free app that links up with your local library or I think any library. All you need is a card from that library system. And then you basically get access to every ebook and every audio book and even maybe

55:46some other media that that particular library system has. So I've hooked mine up to the Monroe County Library system, Rochester's in Monroe County, New York. And like right now I'm listening to a nonfiction book Deep Work by Cal Newport. I probably should have a better answer to my favorite book. I mean, I can tell you in the personal finance realm, I still talk about my really influences from a random walk down Wall Street and the Bobelheads guide to investing. I mean, there's some really good seminal financial planning books out there too. On the fiction side, it's a really good question. My mom was an English teacher. So I ought to, again, I ought to have a better answer to the one fiction book. There are many that stand out. So okay, I'm going to shout out to my mom and shout out to she taught seventh grade English. And so this is a throwback. This is an adult fiction. It's probably more like teenage fiction. But I tell you what, I think adults would enjoy the books too. There was an author, there is an author, Chris Crutcher. Chris and Crutcher both starting with a C. And he wrote teen fiction, fiction with the

56:47main characters being like high school students, middle school, college age students. And I probably read every one of his books, really most of his books in my teenage years. And just, you know, really, really well written and kind of meaningful books for a, you know, adolescent to read. I don't know. You don't hear about Chris Crutcher that much. All I know, he's not even really that well known. But if you've never heard of Chris Crutcher, go look him up. You don't want to make your mom disappointed with that answer. Maybe you'll understand this question. I didn't quite understand this question. Your go-to knots or hitches for canoeing and hiking. Do you have an answer for that one? Yes, yes. Shout out. I think this one came from a, I think it was Dr. Brad, I believe, who's in Vermont, maybe in New England. And he knows I'm an Adirondack guy. I literally think he's asking about favorite knots, like favorite ways of tying a knot. Oh, because, you know, as a suit. But I was like, that's pretty meesh, so let's throw it in here. As a woodsman, as a bowter, as a camper, candidly, it's like, it's not like I was a boy scout. I really don't know that many knots. I think I know like two different types of knots.

57:48And one of them's good for tying down, you know, tent stuff and one of them's good to use when you're tying a boat off to a cleat on a dock. So instead, I'll just talk about, maybe I'll just, you know, I'll, I'll pivot Brad and just say favorite place to hike. And I'll give a shout out to the Adirondack High Peaks, 46 peaks in the Adirondacks, over 4,000 feet. Most of them within a 10 minute drive, 10 mile drive of Lake Placid, New York, which is a beautiful place. A lot of people, if you're an outdoors person in the Northeast, US somewhere on your bucket list is you want to hike all 46 of the high peaks. And I'm about halfway through my 46th or journey and excited for many more trips up there to eventually check off all 46 of those. That's awesome, man. So listeners, if you are a 46er or aspiring 46er, let me know. Reach out and tell me, I'm interested to know which ones you've done and which, maybe which peak you want to finish your 46 on. Let's start talking about some mountain climbing. What's your strategy for that? Are you going to save the hardest for last or a favorite for last? Yeah, that's a good question.

58:49I'm going to save some, I mean, everybody kind of knows if you're into this, some of them are just slugs of hikes and you just don't even get any good views once you're on top. And others are, I mean, they're all hard candidly. These are not easy hikes, but some of them just have majestic, beautiful views that are just like otherworldly. And so if you know, you know, but I think I'm going to try to finish my 46 on either a haystack or on skylight. I think that's what I've decided upon. I saved the most important for last pineapple on pizza. Are you in or out on pineapple? I think I'm out just because there's too many other great toppings for pizza. My mom is a very good baker and basically everything we ever ate growing up was made from scratch. And that's just, it's hard to emulate. I certainly don't emulate it in my own life right now. But I use her pizza recipe to make my own dough. We make our own pizza from scratch. And there are a lot of fun things you can put on pizza. And I think a lot of interesting things before you have to go all the way down the list to pineapple. So it's not that I'm against pineapple.

59:49I think pineapple is great as an individual food, but I think there's just too many other toppings to check off before you get to the pineapple level of potential toppings. Friendly disagreement on that one. Pineapple is usually a first choice for me. So that's a high pick for me. But do you have a favorite topping on pizza or you're pretty open? It's not maybe what you're thinking of, but if you've never put pesto on a pizza, highly recommend using pesto. You can just use like a white sauce and pesto instead of any red sauce. And it makes for a really great flavor in my opinion. I think maybe pesto is a bit of an acquired taste. I don't know if there are people out there who are anti-pesto. I really recommend incorporating some pesto into your sauce for a great flavor profile. And experiment with the cheese. Different cheeses too. You don't have to go all mozzarella. There are some great ways to put different cheeses on a pizza and have some great flavors. I would agree with that. Kyle and I were pizza fanatics in Austin. We'll usually get three pizzas anytime that we go out so that two of them can be reds sauce and one can be pesto or some kind of other base.

1:00:50Very nice. I'm a fan of pesto pizza as well. Jesse Mann, this has been such a blast. So appreciative that you invited me on to have this abnormal yet fun conversation for 150. Super excited to see what's to come. Do you have any teasers? Anything that is your plan to bring out in the next 50 or so episodes? Well, good question. And, Emil, thank you, Justin. And as I started the episode, I mean, again, audience members, thank you guys because I think so much of what I do day in and day out really is intertwined with this project and therefore intertwined with you as the audience. And I mean it when I say, I don't think I could be doing what I'm doing without you guys listening and participating and writing in your questions and sending in your kind words. So this really is like a symbiotic relationship. So anyway, thank you, Justin, and thank you to the audience. Teasing out what's to come. You know, more of the same for sure because I think what I'm doing seems to be well received and people really enjoy a lot of the content that we've been putting together, Justin, over these recent say 50 episodes plus.

1:01:53I've been teasing around with an idea and one idea. So I'll drop one teaser and maybe the audience members can let me know what they think. But I've been noodling with this idea of audience members sends me in a very detailed set of their financial circumstances. And I work through kind of like a, you can think of it as like, Jesse, tell me what you think, am I okay? Can I retire yet? And we devote an entire episode to someone's financial facts and figures. Some cool parts about it is it allows me to work through some of their details using our financial planning software. Could probably record a video to accompany it or somehow I think it might require some visual aids because if you're driving down the car right now and I lob 18 different numbers at you to define someone's financial picture, that's a lot. So it makes me think through exactly how the format would be. I've run the idea by a few individual listeners via email and it seems to be something that people at least are telling me they would really enjoy. So if you think you'd enjoy that and if you have a preference for again, I'm a little

1:02:54worried if it's audio only, how easily it's going to be to consume. So anyway, if it sounds interesting to you and you have an idea for how it could be presented in a way that you personally would enjoy, I am all ears. I'm so stoked for that format Jesse. I hope it's coming sooner rather than later. We will let you know. The easiest way to let me know and for you to stay in the loop would probably be to subscribe to the newsletter shameless plug. So just head over to bestinterest.blog and sign up for the newsletter in that way you can stay in the loop for even when I need people to submit info so that I can then start producing those episodes. Thank you Justin and thank you everybody for listening. Thanks for tuning into this episode of personal finance for long term investors. If you have a question for Jesse to answer on a future episode, send him an email over at its blog. The best interest. His email address is Jesse at bestinterest.blog. Again, that's Jesse at bestinterest.blog. Did you enjoy the show? Subscribe, rate and review the podcast wherever you listen. This helps others find the show and invest in knowledge themselves.

1:03:55And we really appreciate it. We'll catch you on the next episode of personal finance for long term investors. Personal finance for long term investors is a personal podcast meant for education and entertainment. It should not be taken as financial advice and it's not prescriptive of your financial situation.